Sunshine and plight

The philosophical, bookish Okkervil River are big on beauty but consumed with the brevity of life – being sick as a child helps you get to grips with that dichotomy, as main man Will Sheff tells writes SIOBHÁN KANE

A RECURRING image on Okkervil River's sixth album is the throat. "A slit throat makes a note like a raw winter wind," Will Sheff sings on The Valley. The irony is that he almost lost his voice on the recent tour. I remind him of an electric performance at the End of the Road festival in Dorset in September, where he seemed to shatter himself in the moment, which must have a cost.

“It does. You get sprains or broken bones,you lose your voice, you lose your bearings. One classic scenario every touring musician knows is stepping into the shower and catching sight of yourself in a mirror and noticing you’re covered in mysterious bruises. You lose relationships. You lose friends. You wake up and don’t know where you are. You get depressed and lonely and have mini freak-outs. You miss family holidays. You miss weddings, funerals, birthdays. But it’s the job, and I take it really seriously. It goes back to that thing of musicians being a brotherhood. You’re in the company of all these people who have done this before, and you have to prove you can try to stand up to their example.”

This sense of responsibility permeates all of Okkervil River's work, and albums such as Black Sheep Boyand The Stage Namesmight have been concept records, but they were underwritten with a philosophical impulse,framed by the reality that our time is very limited, something that has been with Sheff since childhood.

"People think of children as very happy and carefree, but I remember being a somewhat emotionally fraught child and having a lot on my mind. I was really sick when I was very young, and I have a lot of early memories of being in the hospital. I think that whole experience was really frightening to my parents, and I remember having the sense of being a new person who didn't exist before. When I was writing the songs for I Am Very Far, I wanted to jolt myself back into that earlier mindset. Part of that meant re-examining that shock and confusion of realising you're a being that started existing suddenly, out of nowhere, and before too long won't exist any more, and trying to figure out what that means and how that feels."

I Am Very Faris a musical monolith. There are more instruments and musicians, a wealth of ideas featuring valleys and "ancient characters", and references from Steely Dan to Roxy Music – it is possibly their richest-sounding record.

“The bigness of the record was a concept that came in slowly. I kept thinking in terms of mythology and the ancient world, which had to do with childhood as well, because in a way that’s this lost adolescence of humankind. I would think about ancient Babylon, this foggy time in ancient civilisation I barely know anything about, and that led to images like Easter Island, the Colossus of Rhodes, even Atlantis, the legend of which is based on a real city that was flooded – this idea of some giant artefact left behind by people who aren’t there any more. I wanted the songs to feel like that, musically and lyrically. I wanted them to have that sense of not easily explaining what they were supposed to mean, and this sense of them being very massive.”

Sheff has a curious mind, and his enthusiasm is engaging. The fact he wrote most of the record in his grandparents’ house further adds to the charm – conjuring epic worlds in the cosiest of environments.

“I love my grandparents; they’ve been a huge influence on me. My grandfather Thomas Holmes Moore is everything I ever wanted to be as a person. Writing at their house is just an excuse to get to see them and still feel like I’m getting things done.

“But for this record it was really important because of the childhood and nature aspects of the theme. I spent a lot of my childhood at their house. In some ways the house and the town are the same as they were when I was little, so going back there it felt more possible to be in touch with some earlier version of myself.”

That Sheff values people is clear in the way he talks about his family, and also in the way he filters various people through his lyrics, for example on 2005's Black Sheep Boy, which was loosely based around the life of heroin-addicted folk singer Tim Hardin. He reclaims figures that are viewed as tragic and breathes a redemptive existence for them, acknowledging the transcendental power of music.

“With someone such as Tim Hardin, John Berryman, Jobriath or Roky Erickson, it’s a matter of standing up for a fellow musician or artist who suffered or fell. There have been musicians throughout human history who have experienced the same things – travel, poverty, instability, extremes. Whether you’re O’Carolan or Bill Monroe or Fugazi,you’ve probably all been in a lot of the same situations. It’s like a brotherhood that includes people who aren’t around any more,but who you have to champion. I’ve always felt that’s been one of my responsibilities as a musician.” This complex relationship with notions of pain and beauty preoccupies and inspires the band, though it perplexes Sheff.

“Beauty can be a scary thing, because it’s so subjective and hard to control. In a way it’s like sexual attraction. I love the hilarious and routine public spectacle in America of the anti-gay conservative politician being exposed hitting on his male aides. It’s almost heart-warming, because it shows the gap between who we consciously are and deliberately wish we could be, and these rolling, deeper desires underneath. I think beauty’s that way too. It taps into something deep and unruly in us. in some ways it seems to be connected to something much bigger. And your own feelings can be very scary too, if you let them. The world encourages you to be numb, to be more moderate in your reactions to beauty, to keep a lid on things so you can be a productive member of society and move forward in your life, and I understand that, but I think taken too far that practice can cause your soul to wither.”

Sheff’s refusal to be moderate has led to a generosity of spirit and some unexpected adventures, such as working with 13th Floor Elevators founder Roky Erickson, which proved something of a turning point.

"I met Roky through a writer who works at the Austin Chronicle. We played a show together and just clicked personally and musically. Roky is a very loving and spiritually open person. He's in touch with his dark and scary side way more than most people, but he's very gentle. True Love Cast Out All Evil[Erickson's latest record] is a much truer reflection of where he's at now than a gnarly satanic rock record would have been. That record was such a powerful experience to make, and I think it changed my life and what I want out of music.

“Even if you’re making happy and sunny work – which I am all for – you have to make it from a place of understanding that life is not always happy and sunny. If you don’t work from that place, your work isn’t going to be any help to people. It will be false in some way and it’ll crumble when people need it to be stronger.”

Okkervil River play Dublin’s Button Factory on November 18